Stephen Wadsworth is the Head of Operatic Studies at The Juilliard School, a Staff Director of the Metropolitan Opera, and the director of the Broadway revival of Master Class.

His productions of works such as Aeschylus’ Oresteia, and Wagner’s Ring cycle have established him as a master of the classical repertoire and one of the most influential directors in the American theater.

In addition to directing plays by John Guare (Dallas Theatre Centre), Beth Henley (Roundabout), Anna Deavere Smith (Long Wharf), and Terrence McNally (Master Class on Broadway and in London’s West End), during the 1990s he helped re-introduce the work of Marivaux to the U.S. in a series of translations and productions of three plays (published by Smith and Kraus as Marivaux: Three Plays).

His translation and production of Molière’s Don Juan (Shakespeare Theatre, Old Globe, Seattle Rep, McCarter) re-imagined a lost text and excited great interest in the French academy, as well as on American stages. Wadsworth has also translated and adapted theater works by Monteverdi, Goldoni and Handel, and worked as writer and dramaturg on many new operas and plays.

Currently he has three productions in the repertoire of the Metropolitan Opera (Rodelinda, Boris Godunov and Iphigénie en Tauride) and he’s directed opera across the globe in countries such as Milan, Vienna, London, Edinburgh and Amsterdam as well as in the United States.

Wadsworth worked with Leonard Bernstein on the opera A Quiet Place which earned the pair a Grammy nomination. For his work on Marivaux and Molière, he was also named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. In addition he was a Harman/Eisner Artist in Residence at the Aspen Institute, and a 2013 Fellow at the Sundance Institute Playwrights Retreat at Ucross.

He is currently the James S. Marcus Faculty Fellow at the Juilliard School, where he started the world’s first and only intensive acting program for singers, and he has taught in the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program for over 30 years.